Everlast Online

Reaching the worm nest was not difficult, but took time.

All gravediggers were reassigned to Liz's new goal, while she wondered how she would defeat them. Gathering info with her scouts, Liz figured that the conquest would actually be pretty easy as from what she could see 90% of all the monsters down there were barely higher than level 10:

[Stone Larvae (1-10) (Monster)]

What's more, they had not developed an exoskeleton yet. With this knowledge, Liz figured she could simply use her mages to spray fire down onto them while guarding against the large enemies and using her larger fighting force to defeat the [Monolith of Motherhood]. From its size it seemed to be a raid boss, but her information gathering had also allowed her to discover that it had very few attack moves - limited to spraying pus onto enemies within range and the occasional stone pike flying from her body. For undead, pus bore no risk as it could not infect them and while stone pikes were still dangerous, they could feasibly be evaded or blocked.

It seems this raid will be easier than I thought. Liz laughed internally. She did not take the monsters seriously, they were just disgusting mobs that she would wipe out in order to take control of the underground, just as she had with the surface.

It took hours, and multiple breaks for Liz to check on her sister or eat, but the diggers eventually reached the worm nest - and it smelled just as Liz imagined it would: Disgusting.

"Prepared for contact." Liz said, having her skeleton mages and a large number of her puppets drop into the pit and begin spraying [Flamethrower] that had already reached the 5th level. The gravediggers received their signal and the ground below the mages and puppets moved, causing them to drop in all while spraying flames - Liz's mana dropped rapidly as more and more worms died, screaming in pain. To combat this Liz began drinking potion after potion, all sourced from the puppet she had left making them for her; and while the sea of worms gradually became a sea of fire, Liz's connections began to decrease as they sunk deeper into the pit and met stronger worms.

"Phase two." Liz muttered to herself, activating a skill she did not use much: [Summon - Golem]. They were large and renewable, making them perfect for drawing attention in the nest. Liz also wanted to try and increase the level to be able to summon new golems. The plan mostly worked, between the golems wildly swinging their arms to crush the worms without a care and their bodies being made of stone, the golems became a big target in the worm pit and the number of mages and puppets being destroyed dropped rapidly. Not entirely, but now the health of the golems was becoming a more serious issue.

"Phase three." Liz smiled, seeing her plan work. Following the stone golems was a blood golem - Liz had only been able to gain a single new blood golem and it was likely to be wasted in the worm pit. However, the fluidity of the blood golems body allowed it to kill worm after worm, landing on the pile and seeping through the gaps, only to harden and pierce through worm after worm. The only danger it faced was the rapidly growing temperatures from the [Flamethrower] skill, but as it evaporated more and more blood was present to absorb.

Everything was going perfect, Liz could almost see the worm pit decreasing as worms became ash or paste or drained of blood. But it could not last forever as the [Monolith of Motherhood] screamed out; and from the writhing mass of worms dozens of [Metal Eaters] shot right towards Liz's location - smart enough to target the source.

However, Liz had also anticipated this - catching the metal eaters with the gravediggers [Earth Shaping] abilities and then letting stronger units like dullahans or bone slayers finish them off with strength high enough to pierce through metal. Even as the metal eaters increased in number, Liz's extermination was not slowing down - she would rid the world of this nest if it was the last thing she did.

"SKREEEEE!" The mother let out a horrid scream and sprayed her pus all around her, covering the entire nest and allowing it to seep into the cracks just as Liz's blood golem had, but at greater speeds.

At first Liz didn't care, the undead being entirely immune to the [Disease] status effect that pus would cause, right until she noticed the temperature decreasing. Linking with one of her puppets more closely, she saw that the pus was creating a highly moist environment: The fire simply couldn't catch, it could barely even start.

"Fuck." Liz cursed, not having expected this. She thought her fire would be hot enough, but realised she had overlooked the environment. The worm nest was right above what Liz believed would be Galdrash's equivalent to the mantle, of course the worms had developed resistance to the heat and magma. Liz racked her brain for a while trying to come up with a solution until she realised it was jumping out of the pile at her: Literally.

This is the problem with having so many skills. She smiled, cancelling all use of her [Flamethrower] skill from all sources then using her puppets to dismiss all skeleton mages into her book and finally using the inventory feature of the puppets to leave only one in the pile - damaged as they may be. 

With all her undead and puppets taken care of, Liz activated [Book of the Damned]'s [Create Undead] skill to use the most basic undead of them all. The metal eater corpses that had been building up quickly became simple zombies before diving back into the pile and since they were of the same species it took a while for the living worms to realise they had intruders amongst their ranks. Sadly for the worms, they discovered this too late.

With a single thought, mana flooded into the zombie worm's bodies until they literally burst in a firey explosion of guts and gore - ichor exploding outwards and killing hundreds of worms all around of them, further inflicting [Poison] to those who didn't quite die on the first explosion.

With a never ending supply of metal eaters still jumping out at her, the [Corpse Explosion] never stopped and no matter what the [Monolith of Motherhood] did she could not stop her children from dying: Smart enough to attack the source, not smart enough to know she was only fueling her demise. Furthemore, with all of the explosions a lot of blood and guts were entering Liz's [Blood Donor] range, finally pushing the skill up to level 10 and into evolution as well as counting towards Liz's evolution; all she needed now was [Flesh Stitching] and [Bone Shaper]. 

I'll look at the evolution options later. Liz thought as she watched the fleshy fireworks with glee.

The extermination proceeded quickly after that and when the corpses ran low, Liz's dungeons supplied what they needed. Soon enough the extermination was all but completed, allowing Liz to send her giants down to clean up the pieces. All that was left was the scorched mother herself.

She swung her body at a giant, only to be pushed down as Gloria descended into the blood cavern at full force, her [Inevitable Demise] skill improving her strength by leaps and bounds. With her body pinned, the giants were able to get in on the fight, ripping into the boss's flesh and pulling out chunks in their hand - only to realise the blood was acidic. Luckily, Eren and Liz had descended with the help of Garnet and she could heal the giants - albeit slowly.

Unfortunately, Liz had lost her other blood golem and many of her mages - while all the golems had been destroyed, even if the skill's level did increase all the way up to 8, Liz couldn't wait to gain a new type of golem.

Liz watched unperturbed as the boss monster was cut up, Gloria's sword not being even slightly damaged by the acidic blood - hell, it even seemed to become stronger thanks to its special traits. However, the flesh of the boss almost seemed to ripple; yellowish waves ran deep within the skin and before Liz could issue any commands it literally burst into goo.

The flood of disgusting pus pushed everything present back, even the giants who were much larger than the wave. The smell and sight of all the pus almost forcibly logged Liz out as she gagged, especially as she saw her undead covered in it. 

Eren's head had been knocked off by the force of the wave and Gloria had been launched into the air - only saved from a humiliating death of Flung into the air by exploding pus and dying from falling by using her [Bone Spike] skill to dig her tail into the wall of the cavern and slow her descent. Garnet had been almost entirely dispersed, she was slowly reconstituting herself, but it would take time; thankfully, the giants were mostly fine, knocked over, but ultimately fine.

But with the burst of disgusting fluids came a new threat. The pus was not merely a measure to disperse attackers, but rather open the mother into her second phase; bursting from beneath the now hardening fluids came an insectoid creature. It had dark, gravelly skin and 6 arms coming from its side, each armed with metallic claws; from the back were 3 pincers, pulsating with fluids that Liz couldn't bear to consider. The legs were configured in such a way that the insectoid was clearly a digitigrade animal with highly boosted speed - the once helpless mother had become a more serious threat.

The creature's face, covered in a metallic exoskeleton, much like the rest of its body, flitted between the group of undead present before finally settling on the largest of the undead giants. With its target decided it moved at incredibly speeds and appeared right at the barely recovered giant - before the slow mass of flesh could move, all 3 pincers were embedded into the giant's chest and like pumps the tendrils flooded the giants body with fluids that quickly developed into large pustules - just like what the [Monolith of Motherhood] had covering her body.

As the monster was slow, Liz took the opportunity to determine if she was still fighting the same monster and was glad to see she was, only with some serious changes:

[Metallic Breeder (120) (Boss)]

The name horrified Liz even more than the disgust she had felt for the [Monolith of Motherhood], she had even shook off the surprise at seeing it change races - though that wasn't really what had happened.

In the small moment Liz had allowed herself to panic, the eggs with the giant matured and burst out of its chest in an explosion of yellow goo. It was truly disgusting, but the giant was not killed and in the moment before it fell to the ground from the force of the hatching, its hand crushed a number of the worms that had flooded out of its chest. The breeder did not like that as more of its children had been killed and rushed to the giants head - desiring to finish it off.

Before it could, pulsating black blades descended upon the pair, forcing the breeder to retreat, hardly harming the giant due to the unholy nature of the attack and killing the remaining hatchlings.

Looking over, Liz could see the beheaded figure of Eren, making use of attacks even without her head attached. Her head had been blasted away, but she could still see the battle and so made sure the breeder could not destroy a giant.

The boss snarled from behind its mask, but could not move forward as Liz came back to her senses and launched a volley of [Greater Bone Spear]s and [Leach Arrows] with her army of puppets. The attacks were too slow to land, but the sheer number and speed of casting mixed with a technique Liz had learned from the internet (delaying fire to maintain constant suppression) forced the breeder back.

Soon enough, the heavy hitters were back in the fight: Gloria had descended and began a frontal assault while Garnet assisted after reconstituting herself. The pair took control of the flow of the battle, allowing Eren to focus on healing (and retrieving her head) as well as letting Liz switch to bringing out more undead and further creating new ones from the worm corpses around her. Soon enough Liz had gathered an army that was supporting Gloria and Garnet with ease.

This did occasionally work against her however, as the breeder used some kind of skill that created a fully formed worm that was highly powerful by injecting her undead with its pincer; however, with the assistance of the giants, this was usually taken care of with no more than 15 casualties.

Soon the battered breeder was forced into a corner, its metallic exoskeleton shattered in multiple places and showing off the fleshy parts beneath. Worst of all was the helmet, now gone Liz could see that below it was nothing but a mouth, lined with hundreds of razor sharp teeth all spinning at impossible speeds. One skeleton had been caught in it as it shielded Gloria and was reduced to dust in a matter of seconds.

Now soaked in blood, the breeder was on its last legs; the fight was coming to an end and with Gloria's skill activation - black light gathering on her sword - the breeder was killed, dissolving around the wound until its eventual death.

Liz smiled as she reaped the rewards of her conquest. Even if she had missed a couple worms, with the mother/breeder gone there was nothing to worry about as the likelihood of another nest being created was impossibly low. 

Liz, Gloria and especially Eren had increased in level from the fight and had all reaped the rewards in the shape of skills. What's more, Liz had also received 4 notifications of title acquisition; each replacing the previous one:

Unfortunately, the stat increase of the title didn't stack and Liz only received an increase of 50 END, but she would not complain. On the other hand, Liz's SOU was much lower than it really should have been - at least based on the numbers provided by the title kills. Her SOU had increased to 1000 exactly, and her soul container was at 0.

I should have gotten a thousand from the massacrer title alone. Liz frowned as she looked at the stat. The only explanation is some kind of cap.

As she was, Liz could do nothing about it and turned her attention to other matters: Namely finally assigning her extra stats, her's and her soul-bound undead's skills and finally [Blood Donor]'s evolution.

The trio had risen to 125, 111 and 94 respectively; gaining the following skills: [Ritual Sacrifice (1) (C+)], [True Aura {~} (0%) (F)] and [Resentful Grip (1) (D+)]. Each were powerful skills the girls were happy to acquire; surprisingly, Gloria was the most excited - she even smiled, something Eren refused to let go as she talked endlessly at both Liz and Gloria.

[Ritual Sacrifice] created a large, black magic circle that then absorbed any corpses inside of it. Liz and her undead army would then receive a buff to their attack power based on how many corpses were sacrificed - so while not useful in small battles, if she used it during the extermination she likely wouldn't have taken half the time she did.

I'm going to need to consider how to use corpses more. Liz half-sighed, not really annoyed due to how useful the skill was.

Gloria's skill, [True Aura] was one of great value, even at only F-rank. All melee classes could feasibly create an aura, even Glorias [Demise Blade] skill created one after a certain level of proficiency, but [True Aura] was a skill that created the real thing. All melee classes could gain it and, while incredibly difficult, it could also be gained through training; its value came in the individual. A swordsman with fire aspects would usually gain a fire-based aura while a non elemental swordsman would create a strengthening aura; so, for Gloria she would likely create either a corrosive aura or demise aura. Regardless of what she made, aura was the pride of all melee classes and Gloria couldn't be more thankful she had gained this skill.

Finally was Eren's skill, a curse type. [Resentful Grip] was a combination of curse magic and binding magic as it manifested the resentment of those the target had killed to bind the target with black, ghostly hands. It primarily scaled with UNH and skill level, but if those killed by the target didn't resent them then the skill would not take any effect at all; this would usually be animals who had only killed other animals since animals and beasts typically lacked the intelligence to resent. However, despite that weakness, the skill was still great and could be used on multiple targets at higher levels.

The skills were all very well received and they couldn't wait to make use of them. Next, Liz focused on her stats, making the decision easily as she continued to place them in the ratio of 1:2 of END:INT. This left her with 224 in END thanks to her title and 311 in INT; her HP and INT were likely some of the highest in the entire game - killing the little necromancer would be no easy feat.

The final order of business was the one Liz was most excited for: [Blood Donor]'s evolution.

(A/N: Not a racial skill for vampires. Vampiric just means vampire-like in this sense; common for blood magic abilities)

This was a difficult decision for Liz; [Organ Donor] was a simple upgrade and from the wording Liz presumed it allowed her to absorb energy from living beings which also made it an attack; but on the other hand, [Vampiric Thirst] was a passive skill which would cut down on the MP conversion as she no longer needed to maintain some for herself in order to maintain the skill.

In the end, Liz chose as a child would: Going with the cooler sounding one, and getting access to the [Vampiric Thirst] skill. It began working immediately and Liz could see blood begin to gravitate towards her. Luckily it could be deactivated and so Liz allowed the skill to reach its maximum capacity (which was greater than Liz had expected) before turning it off for the time being.

She would activate it where necessary, but blood made for a useful material for her as a necromancer.

Liz looked over at the corpse, looking to create a rather powerful undead, when her [Soul Sight] skill gave her a strange reaction. Despite having been absorbed by [Soul Catcher], there were still fragments of soul clinging onto the corpse - more than that, they were exceptionally volatile. Liz studied them intently without a word as a new way in which soul moved was incredibly interesting to her; mostly since she began to believe that soul seemed to be an incredible force in Galdrash.

After a while [Soul Sight] reached 100% proficiency, but Liz was not offered any evolution.

Damn. Must be some special conditions. Liz thought grumpily. Though... I wonder what would happen if I...

Using [Soul String] Liz tried something she had never considered before. She nudged the volatile parts of soul towards one another, but doing so was hard as her own soul would regularly be pushed away violently, Liz even reduced her own SOU by 1 before she finally got each piece together in a small and violent looking bead of soul. From there Liz activated [Create Undead], making conscious effort to designate the strange bit of soul as a piece of ingredient. Then, as always, the black circle appeared, but even Gloria could feel the power coming from this circle was different.

The process finished and a hulking monster, vaguely resembling what had once been the [Metallic Breeder] now stood in front of her. The dull, silvery exoskeleton was now a deep black, but maintained the metallic lustre; the undead had lost 2 pairs of arms, leaving it with only 2, but had kept all 3 pincers which were now closer to the bone slayer's tails - only a deep black metal once again with a single blade at the end. Furthermore, in each hand was a curved sword, a crescent blade, that had yellow glowing markings running up the sides of the blade the exact same colour as the pus that exploded from the [Monolith of Motherhood].

The monster looked down at Liz, its size dwarfing her tremendously; there was a black haze coming from the undead, wafting off of it that while slightly comforting for Liz as an undead, only added to the intimidation. The creature was beyond intimidating, but quickly fell into a kneeling position with its head lowered - though that did nothing to make it smaller than Liz.

"Thank you for creating me, My Queen." It spoke, its voice deep and intimidating, but with a slight feminine touch, "I exist to serve, order me as you wish."

Liz and the other could only look on dumbfounded, it was only Liz who didn't know what had been created; but that changed as she pulled out the [Book of Damned Souls] and found the newest page in the bone section:

[Death Knight]

[Abilities: {Enhanced Body}, {Innate Weapon}, {Weapon Mastery}, {Death Aura}]

[General rank estimation: A]

[The most fundamental and well known unit in a necromancer's arsenal. These hulking creatures are best used as front-line commanders; not disposable, but best placed as the vanguard due to their death aura and incredible physical ability. Each death knight is created with an innate weapon that they have mastery over, if lost it can be summoned, if broken it can be recreated (with cooldown); but even without them they are beasts on the battlefield. Death knights are a must have for any necromancer worth their salt]

[Ingredients: {1 Boss/Powerful Corpse}, {Grudge}, {Mastered Weapon}, {Mana}]

[Reduced Ingredients: {100 Corpses}, {Grudge}, { {Mana}]